Alin's Site

I am not self diagnosing myself here but both me and my doctor and a nurse of mine and a lot of people think type 1 Diabetes might be in the cards for me. Yesterday night I had a “Hyperglycemic Attack” In diabetes thats when blood sugar goes too high. Anywho here is the crisis report for that one. Medical nerds only beyond this line… Kidding, but it’s not exactly plain english either!

CRISIS REPORT

A blood sugar crisis was spotted and intervened at approximately 6 PM. At 6 PM noticable increases in CO2 retention up to 47 torr/mmhg were recorded with a breath rate of approximately 30 (20 set on the ventilator + 10 manually triggered) heart rate was sinus tachycardic with peaks at 130, not lasting longer than a few seconds. Oxygen saturation and blood pressure stayed within normal limits throughout. At 6:16 PM a blood sugar test was obtained with the above symptoms being the trigger for an emergency test series, 127 mg/dL indicating slight hyperglycemic crisis. Intervention was produced initially with gatorade and walnuts. After 30 minutes a retest was done at 6:46 and blood sugar was at 133 mg/dL. between those tests the Gatorade was replaced with FUZE (an extremely low sugar and low carb diet drink) as the gatorade was found to be high in sugars. At 7:16 after consumption of approximately 1/3rd bag of walnuts and a full bottle of FUZE blood sugar was restored to 98 mg/dL After blood sugar dropped other vital signs normalized by 8:45 PM

Blood sugar was normal at the “bedtime” reading at 9:02 PM at 102 mg/dL.

Tonight I Had another slight crisis hitting 117 and reversing it quickly with lots of Walnuts and sugar free soda to get it down, went down to 84. Good.

I am going to be probably getting a lot more strips per month to allow the expanded testing needs.

Well as I stated a while ago. when I am not in the hospital daily postings do not apply unless needed. Today my mom is going to pick up my new glucose meter and supplies as I am a high suspect for hypoglycemia and or diabetes type 1 or 2. So we need a way to track my progress. Whether diabetic or not someone with low blood glucose should have a meter and test regularly. I will probably get some pictures and maybe a video… Not too sure about an unboxing video but who knows!

It is done! Around 4:30 PM the ambulance was there to get me. Ironically with the same guy as last night as one of the EMT’s and a cute female EMT with him. I went home today in the PICU Transport Mobile Intensive Care Unit, which patients NEVER go home in, it is exclusively for interhospital transport. I guess my house counts as a hospital.

I caught a 90 minute video today and also the ones of last night going INTO the PICU, I will probably combine them via editing.

I seriously need to get my butt in gear and start uploading some of this crap to youtube! Not that many of you will watch a probably 85 minute video consisting of various ambulance rides.

ON top of that I am still going to upload that half of a ride after the trach and the arrival at home.

And then many other videos.

tired… suction… sleep.

The orders list has been updated. It now includes a glucose meter.

We also might discharge via ambulance today or tomorrow. I might be able to get a working video all the way through this time if not we have that other one in this laptop that i still have yet to upload. along with 15 other videos. one of being loaded into the PICU transport team ambulance and one of going up to PICU. More news to follow.

Yesterday As some of you know our house works a lot like a hospital so if we had a PA system at 2:45 you would have heard “Pediatric Code Blue, Pediatric Code Blue, Pediatric Code Blue” at 1 PM me and my nurse noticed that my P waves had gone missing, earlier my blood sugar was in the low normal at about 70 I was already reacting at that level thanks to my nurse being diabetic she noticed me falling asleep at inappropriate times and got the meter out to get said reading, having blood sugar crashes where I would fall asleep at absolutely random points. Then at 1:45 or so we noticed my heart rate speeding up, by 2:30 we were at 180 and my neck was throbbing like I was having a stroke. In the last hour we called the doctor 3 times and the nurse called again and said “I want a doctor or nurse… now!!!” The nurse told us to call a code blue so we did. I was put in an ambulance and rushed to Northwest Community Hospital ER and en route was given a shot of Adenosine to try to slow down my heart rate, it worked slightly. Then in the ER they took my blood sugar and I was at 110 which is a bit high for non diabetic but I felt fine until I went into the SVT (Supraventricular Tachycardia) that would not convert. At this point my doctor is ordering me a blood sugar meter to use frequently and chart my readings and keep myself no lower than 80. Anyway while at the hospital I started coughing really hard after being on no heat or humidification for a few hours and started puking, thankfully it stopped. Right as my ventilator battery was running on empty the PICU transport ambulance arrived, they quickly got me loaded and onto the ambulances power supply. Then the PICU transport ambulance sped us to Lutheran General Hospital where they admitted me directly to the PICU. I was in stable condition over the night, I might leave today or tomorrow. More news tonight.

Kelly and PSA you all rock!

Hey everyone, I am sure you are getting sick of seeing my E-Mails in your inbox DAILY. The volume of news has subsided since discharge from the hospital. Of course sometimes we have news spikes in which I might switch back to daily delivery. I have an awesome newer nurse Kelly who does days who will be doing up to 4 days a week, sunday monday tuesday and wednesday, someone else might get monday but probably not. Anyhow the big chunk of news came today around 5:00 PM when I received a phone call from Genentech, the makers of Pulmozyne A.K.A Dornase Alfa and they said my doctor submitted a statement of medical necessity with the diagnosis of “Acute Respiratory Failure” HELLO DOC!!! I am on this ventilator because it is Chronic and they said they will not fund it for that condition so that screws us up bad this coming month. Hopefully we can get that situation fixed.

By the way, I decided to clean up the orders list.

we are also waiting on a few other things to be ordered after the completion of these, the next order batch is. All of the below are considered dead until converted to live orders.

Well not much went on today until the evening when I got an E-Mail from my blog system notifying me that Kira and her mom contacted me. This is a real cool thing, then again this is odd since both me and her have similar infections going on and have antibiotics going on. They think she has the flu so they are using Tamiflu, I receive very low profile exposure so flu exposure is highly unlikely especially with our isolation provision in place. We are currently on level 1 caution which means gloves only. level 2 is gloves and mask level 3 is gloves mask and gown protection. We downgraded from level 2 today as I was on antibiotic for 48 hours. “Tomorrow” is Monday which means a lot of paperwork and phone calls.

The Vest System and Vests

I have yet another infection brewing we think, take no chances we are firing the big guns. Wide spectrum Bactrim DS to kill off anything in its way. We are also enacting an isolation protocol similar to the smurf protocol.

And now in other news you probably are looking at the picture saying, WTF? the vest thing AGAIN? yeah, MedTronic finally gave clearance for it to be used officially with the baclofen pump so I am requesting that they order one straight away, regular CPT does not do the job!

The ambulance video is still being edited and is quite funky, it will take more time before i post any videos. be glad you got photos!

Some of you are wondering at this point, what the hell is ETCO2 and why make a whole post dedicated to it and make new years second back seat.

Ever since we came home my ETCO2 numbers which SHOULD be 30-40 mmHg, which means how much CO2 (carbon dioxide) Is detected in the air i exhale have been above 40 or right near it. Every time I approach my doctor he is always along the lines of “I Control your ventilator not you” Translation “I control your breathing not you” Hmm, what’s wrong with this picture. I honestly think I am completely capable and knowledgeable  enough to run my own vent. So this is why I call this ETCO2 madness.

Happy new years, I got 4 batteries for my new blackberry, read it and weep, 6 batteries in all!

goodnight